


Weapons Are Made to Be Used

by karatam



Category: Marvel (Movies), Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Backstory, Canon Compliant, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-15
Updated: 2012-09-15
Packaged: 2017-11-14 07:15:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/512711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karatam/pseuds/karatam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Do you know what it’s like to be unmade?”</p><p>“You know I do.”</p><p>She was not always a weapon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Weapons Are Made to Be Used

 

 

10.

“Do you know what it’s like to be unmade?”

“You know I do.”

 

 

 

 

 

9.

“Papa!” The shout echoes around the walled in courtyard as a little red haired girl sprints out of the front door and into a man’s arms. He laughs as he lifts her and spins her around, smiling when he sets her on his hip.

“Hello, little Natasha.” The man bends to pick up his briefcase while keeping a firm grip on his daughter. “I hope you were good for Maria while I was away.”

Her face is perfectly solemn as she stares up at him and says, “Of course I was.” He just raises one eyebrow at her in response. A giggle escapes from her mouth as she buries her face into her father’s shoulder.

“I think it’s past your bedtime, Tasha. We have to get up early tomorrow so we can spend the day together before I leave again.” He holds up one finger at her immediate protests. “Natasha.” She quiets and he opens the door to the apartment building, digging into his pocket for the key. “I’ll only be gone for a day or two this time and then I’ll be home for weeks. I promise.”

“Okay, papa.”

 

 

 

 

 

8.

“You know the punishment for this kind of thing, Nikolai.”

“Please, I have a daughter. I’m the only family she has left.”

“We know. Dr Dragunov says she’ll be an ideal test subject.”

“No! Not Natasha! Please, I’ll do anything you ask.”

“Sadly, it’s too late for that, Nikolai. Goodbye.”

 

 

 

 

 

7.

Natasha’s papa doesn’t come home after two days.

Or three.

Or four.

Their neighbour, Maria, lets Natasha sleep in her apartment, knowing that the little girl has only her father in the city. She calls the police, but they say everything is already being done, to just sit tight and wait for news.

On the ninth day of waiting, Maria opens the door to three tall men in black suits. They push into the apartment and she tries to resist until she sees the gun tucked into the waistband of the first man’s slacks. He flashes a badge she doesn’t recognize in her face as the other two men go farther into the apartment, obviously looking for something.

Maria is shocked back into action by the shrill scream that comes from the bedroom. She lurches forward against the thick arm of the man standing in front of her as the men come back out of the bedroom, one of them holding a struggling Natasha over his shoulder.

“No! What are you doing? She is just a child!”

“It’s none of your concern.” The man’s voice is low and full of menace. Her mind flashes to the gun and she stops struggling. “I would also advise against calling the police again. It could be…unpleasant for everyone involved.”

The third man presses a rag to Natasha’s face and the girl goes quiet and limp.

Maria is left standing in her empty apartment building.

She doesn’t call the police.

 

 

 

 

 

6.

Natasha opens her eyes and immediately shuts them again, pain shooting through her head at the blinding light.

The sound of metal scraping against metal fills her ears, and she opens her eyes again, slowly this time. She’s lying on a cot, blankets tucked in around her, and there is a man sitting in a chair by the side of her bed. Instincts kicking in, she shrinks away from him, sitting up and shifting toward the wall.

He is wearing a white coat, like doctors on the television, with a shiny badge clipped to the breast pocket. Smile lines crinkle around his eyes, and his glasses make his eyes look a bit bigger than normal. He smiles at her, and she flinches.

“Hello, Natasha. My name is Alexander.” He pauses, and Natasha stays silent. “I’m sorry if the men who brought you here scared you; they’re not very good with kids like you. Are you hungry?”

Alexander’s smile is still there and Natasha wants to say no, but her belly is rumbling and her mouth is dry. “Yes.”

“Excellent! Come with me and I’ll take you to the mess hall. You can meet the other children and-“

“There are other kids?” She can’t help herself and almost claps her hand over her mouth.

“Of course. It wouldn’t do to have you be lonely here.” He stands and holds out a hand to her.

She stares at his hand for a long moment before sliding her own small hand into his. He swipes his badge against a grey section of the wall and the door swings open. With a tug of her hand, he starts walking down the hall, Natasha following in his wake.

The children in the compound (she’s still not sure exactly where they are yet) are not like any other children she’s met before.

They’re like her.

They’re smart and athletic and just a little reserved. They range from her age, ten years old, all the way up to eighteen. There are maybe one hundred of them that she’s seen so far.

They attend classes on everything from math and physics to history and music. There are teachers who tell her how to eat properly and change her accent. She starts learning English and German on her third day there. She soaks everything in; it’s so different from her old school where she just felt bored all the time.

After two months, she is taken to the gymnasium and they start teaching her self-defense.

“Can’t be too careful,” is what she is told.

 

 

 

 

 

5.

Every time she asks to speak to her papa, she is turned away.

The adults tell her that he’s busy, that he’s out of the country, that he had wanted her to stay here until he came back.

She doesn’t believe them, but there are guards at every door and they watch her every move. She waits and tells herself that she’ll get out as soon as she gets the chance, and then she’ll go back to the apartment and wait until her papa gets home.

He’s probably worried sick about her.

 

 

 

 

 

4.

Natasha breezes through her lessons, soon in classes with children years older than she is. She starts using weapons in her training, and she knows it’s gone far beyond just self-defense. She knows of the glory of Russia, the honour it is to serve her.

She can speak five languages and take out opponents who have thirty pounds on her.

Months go by and turn into years, and the picture of her papa in her mind starts to fade. She can no longer remember what his voice sounded like, how it felt to have him spin her around in the walled courtyard of their apartment building.

At night, she’ll stare at the ceiling and try to recall every detail, but they’re slipping away from her one by one, replaced by the knowledge of exactly how to place her hands to break a man’s neck, of how to line up a perfect shot while diving for cover, of how to defend herself against a knife.

The worst part is that she doesn’t know how to stop losing him.

Losing herself, really.

 

 

 

 

 

3.

On her sixteenth birthday, Alexander comes into her room with a thick folder. He hands it to her to read while he goes on about how this man is a danger to society and has a secret agenda and will just kill more people until he is stopped.

Natasha just says, “And no one every suspects a kid.”

When the bullet goes through the man’s head, Natasha’s hands don’t shake. She is trained and focused and determined.

This is her first kill.

Then she goes into the next alley and throws up against the wall. Stumbling backward, she looks down at her hands and can see the blood leaking from the gun all over her fingers. She nearly throws up again.

One deep breath and then another, she tries to calm herself down enough to think clearly.

Alexander is waiting for her at a café three blocks away.

Police sirens wail in the distance as she stands there, unable to make herself move. She has maybe ten minutes before the police come barrelling down this alley and find her here.

She is an assassin. Alexander is her handler. She works for the KGB, or at least some experimental branch of it. She’s free and out of the compound for the first time in six years.

Natasha looks down the alley in the direction of Alexander and the café. Years of trust and conditioning pull her toward him, because he has meant ‘home’ since she was a child.

Blood drips from her gun to the ground, slashing against her shoe.

She runs the other way, gun still clenched in her hand.

She doesn’t make it three blocks before they find her.

 

 

 

 

 

2.

She’s one block from a bus station when she feels a jab in her side, and suddenly her vision is washed with blue.

The busy street fades into a bright white room, lights throwing people into shadow, hiding their faces. She hears a voice above the beeping of machines and clattering of metal instruments against trays.

“Implement Project Black Widow. It seems fitting that it be done on his daughter.” It’s Alexander speaking, voice cold and dispassionate.

She’s blindsided by the surprise she feels at his betrayal. She saw it coming, after all.

There are electrodes attached to her temples. Her wrists and ankles are strapped to the table. She attempts to move but her limbs are filled with lead and she can’t even make a sound. Her eyes dart around the room but she stays still.

She sees Alexander clean his glasses on his lab coat before he turns and leaves the white room.

A scalpel cuts into her left arm and she tries to scream.

 

 

 

 

 

1.

Twenty-one years, 7 months and 22 days after her first assignment, she goes freelance.

They come after her, of course. No one leaves the KGB in anything but a body bag but she is the Black Widow. She leaves blood and death in her wake and it’s dripping from her.

Night brings only the memories of scalpels and needles and electrodes attached to her temples. She stays awake instead, leaning against the wall with a knife held loosely in her hand. On the opposite wall, a picture of a man in a white lab coat is taped up. There is a deep knife mark where his face should be.

She hasn’t aged since she was twenty-two years old.

She isn’t even sure she’s entirely human anymore.

Tempered steel is where her soul should be.

The KGB did this to her, the people ( _Alexander_ ) who raised her, who molded her, who sculpted her, who made her.

Unmade her, really.

She picks up the handset of one of the new push-button phones that Stark had made all the rage in America and hesitates for only a moment before dialing.

“Barnes. I need to call in a favor.”

The Black Widow was the KGB’s deadliest weapon, and weapons were made to be used.

It’s time to take herself out of their hands. Permanently.

 

 

 

 

 

0.

“Do they start that young?”

“I did.”

 

 


End file.
